Holy See looks into the Holy Land problems

John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. He wrote a memoir of the five years he spent in Hollywood, where he worked in the movie industry prior to becoming a full time and activist and organizer with the US antiwar movement post-9/11. The book is titled Dreams That Die and is published by Zero Books. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring.
You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1

Rather than follow the
cautious and quiescent path of his predecessors when it comes to
sensitive issues, Pope Francis has revealed an appetite for
engaging them head on. Whether it is to do with social and
economic injustice because of government policies across the EU
in response to the collapse of neoliberalism, whether it is on
the issue of global poverty, or whether war and conflict, this
pope has sought to effect positive change.

When it comes to the seemingly intractable obstacles to a lasting
and just settlement of the Israel-Palestine question, Pope
Francis deserves credit for attempting to succeed where countless
peace processes, initiatives, and rounds of international
diplomacy have failed. However, his visits to the various Muslim
and Jewish holy sites and to controversial landmarks associated
with the conflict – such as the security barrier/apartheid wall –
carried more symbolic than political weight during the tour, in
the absence of any concrete political process, symbolism matters.

Pope Francis’ ability to engender the goodwill of Israelis and
Palestinians alike, culminating in both the head of the
Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and the President of
Israel, Shimon Peres, accepting his invitation to meet with him
in Rome, bears testament to the trust he has built around the
world over the course of his time as pontiff. Considering the
extreme sensitivities that surround this issue in particular, he
had to tread a sensitive path during his tour to ensure that he
did not demonstrate favouritism to either side, thus alienating
one at the expense of the other.

Due to the sharp polarisation that exists between Israelis and
Palestinians over every aspect of the tragic history that has
impacted both, this can never be anything other than a near
impossible task, making the pope’s success in doing so all the
more impressive.

Sensitive issues

An example of the sensitivities concerned came with Pope Francis’
decision to visit the tomb of Theodor Herzl during his tour.
Herzl is venerated in Israel as the father of Zionism, the
ideological foundation of the state of Israel. Without Herzl,
Israelis claim, there would be no Israel, and without Israel to
bring the Jewish people together in a state of their own, they
would be at risk and vulnerable to another genocide. To
Palestinians, however, Zionism is a racist, supremacist ideology,
providing justification for their dispossession, ethnic
cleansing, and seven decades of suffering at the hands of what
they and their supporters consider an apartheid state.

Squaring both positions, finding some middle ground between both,
remains a forlorn hope, illustrating the extent of the enmity
that exists between two peoples who find themselves existing
cheek by jowl. If it were true that history can act both as a
spur to progress or be a brake on it, in the Holy Land the latter
has long been the case, with two competing historical narratives
clashing head on.

For Israelis, and Jewish people the world over, the Holocaust
looms large over every aspect of their lives, informing their
worldview, sense of nationhood, and the unequivocal assertion of
the right to do whatever it takes to ensure their security
regardless of the opinions or condemnation of the international
community. It is an outlook responsible for a sense of
exceptionalism, a belief in Israel’s right to contravene and
violate international law when and if it suits its national
interest. The occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of
Jewish settlements on Palestinian land is a case in point, as is
the continued refusal to allow the return of the millions of
Palestinian refugees to the land from which they or their parents
and grandparents were removed or left during what Israelis know
as the War of Independence, but which to the Palestinians will
always be known as the Nakba (Catastrophe). Both names describe
the conflict and convulsion that ensued in 1948, when Israel came
into being as a modern nation state recognised by the United
Nations.

The Nakba carries the same significance for Palestinians and
Arabs in general, as the Holocaust does for Israelis and Jews the
world over. Afif Asieh, a Palestinian diplomat, cogently
described the truth at the heart of the hierarchy of human
suffering which both sides contest in the following terms:

“No one people has a monopoly on human suffering and every
ethnic tragedy stands on its own.

If I were a Jew or gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most
atrocious event in history. If I were a black African, it would
be slavery and apartheid. If I were a Native American, it would
be the discovery of the New World by European explorers and
settlers that resulted in near-total extermination. If I were an
Armenian, it would be the Ottoman massacres.

I happen to be a Palestinian, and for me it is the
Nakba.

Humanity should consider all the above repugnant. I do not
consider it advisable to debate hierarchies of suffering. I do
not know how to quantify pain or measure suffering. I do know
that we are not children of a lesser God.”

Contradictions within

As well as history being capable of being a spur to progress and
a brake on it, it also reveals that empires and colonial projects
often fall under the weight of their own contradictions. This
usually takes place over a protracted period of determined
resistance, passive and active, on the part of its victims -
unless, of course, its victims are wiped out in the process, or
close to it. Consider the fate of the Native Americans or
Australia’s indigenous aborigines in this regard. At the same
time the material privileges gained from the exploitation and
expropriation of a colonised people acts as a slow-acting
corrosive on the society of the colonising state, poisoning it
with racism and hatred for those it has colonised as it seeks to
justify the material privileges and psychological sense of
supremacy and national pride that accrues from that colonisation.

Israel reflects this process in the fact it is currently being
governed by possibly the most right wing government in its
history. Led by Benjamin Netanyahu, it shows no evidence of being
willing to grant any concessions to the Palestinians anytime
soon. Here again, though, we must be careful to remember than
unlike other colonial states, Israel was forged from the ashes of
a European Holocaust that saw six million Jews slaughtered for no
other reason than they were Jews. The psychological impact of
this heinous crime against humanity can never be underestimated,
regardless of the actions of the Israeli state in its repression
of the Palestinian people and their right to freedom and
statehood.

Regardless, the injustice suffered by the Palestinians cannot be
justified by the Holocaust - else we describe a world in which
the only answer to injustice and suffering is to oppress and
inflict suffering on others. Moreover, the victims of the
Holocaust share a bond of humanity with victims of every other
genocide and state sanctioned crimes against humanity throughout
history. It is a bond of suffering that transcends ethnicity,
religion and/or nationality, and which embraces the many thousand
Palestinian victims of the Nakba and the millions more
subsequently rendered stateless and refugees as a consequence. It
is a circular relationship that cannot be broken, no matter the
determined efforts some make to isolate and elevate acts of
barbarism and crimes against humanity above others.

Nothing we have seen recently suggests that Israelis or
Palestinians are ready to acknowledge the suffering both have
suffered in their recent history. That said, to posit the issue
as one involving two equal sides fails to get to the heart of it.
The axiom that only the strong can compromise and only equals can
reach agreement applies. Moreover, here Israel holds all the
cards. The Palestinians have nothing to bargain with, no leverage
to bring to bear, other than the moral force of their argument
for the justice that has long denied them.

If Pope Francis is to succeed in having any impact where others
have failed, he has to succeed in bringing Israel round to the
realisation that justice for the Palestinian people will not
threaten its security, but rather will enhance it.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.